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Introduction to Linux - A Hands on Guide

This guide was created as an overview of the Linux Operating System, geared toward new users as an exploration tour and getting started guide, with exercises at the end of each chapter.
For more advanced trainees it can be a desktop reference, and a collection of the base knowledge needed to proceed with system and network administration. This book contains many real life examples derived from the author's experience as a Linux system and network administrator, trainer and consultant. They hope these examples will help you to get a better understanding of the Linux system and that you feel encouraged to try out things on your own.

I have a Dell Latitude CS I received from a guy at work. It no longer boots the OS (Win 2k) it just hangs at the loading screen. The laptop has no cd / floppy drive. It has one usb port but no boot from usb option. So my only option is booting from network.

I have a junker computer I can set up with any distro. A friend of mine has tried to discourage me from attempting to put slackware on this laptop (He is an avid slackware user so it's not that he doesnt like the distro) claiming I will most likely have lots of problems and it would be much better to go with ubuntu.

Question 1.) Has anyone successfully installed slack on a laptop of this kind or a similar version?

Question 2.) What distro should I put on the junker computer and any clues as to how to set it up for what I plan on doing?

I looked at the specs of the laptop and I do not see any reason why an out of the box install should not work. I have installed Slackware on 4 laptops and it worked great, other than I had to work on the NIC. Which I had to do with Fedora, Suse and such. If you use Slackware 11 and the huge26.s kernel, it should pic up any hardware you have.

I am not sure what CPU you have or the amount of memory. But KDE will likely run slow, I would suggest Fluxbox of xfce for a dekstop.